Video games have been around now for fifty years. Think about that for a moment, fifty years. We have had a half of a century to enjoy these little cartridges and discs of content. It was only relatively recently, the mid-90s, that video games became the media behemoth they are today. Here is a list of the globally top selling game franchises in history.

10 - The Legend of Zelda

Native name: ゼルダの伝説 (zeruda no densetsu)
Original release: February 21, 1986
Units sold: 59 million

The Legend of Zelda series is games typically in the genre of Action RPG; that the game uses real time battles (as opposed to turn based such as most Final Fantasy) and typically requires dexterity to move your character about to avoid traps, etc. The Legend of Zelda series is also well known for its puzzles, the triforce, and the well overused trope called Save the Princess. The action usually takes place inside a dungeon where solving the aforementioned puzzles allows one to delve deeper until meeting the dungeon boss. There are 15 games that make up the official Zelda series. The series was created by Nintendo's world famous Shigeru Miyamoto (宮本茂).

9 - FIFA

Original release: December 1993
Units sold: 65 million

FIFA Soccer/FIFA Football is a series of Electronic Arts soccer/football games released under the EA Sports label. This series of soccer games were the first to have an official license by FIFA. Globally, FIFA is EA Sports most popular sports game.

8 - Grand Theft Auto

Original release: October 1997
Units sold: 70 million

Grand Theft Auto can be seen as having two distinct game eras: the first two games in the series were done in an overhead birds-eye view, and 3D sandbox style game play from the third edition on. The idea behind GTA is you are either a small-time criminal looking to make your way up through the ranks of organized crime or a person who has been wronged by someone and looks to seek revenge.

Grand Theft Auto is well known for its portrayal of violence and other criminal activities. The principal behind the game is you use vehicles to explore an urban (and in San Andreas a large open country side) to further the story along.

7 - John Madden Football

Original release: 1988
Units sold: 75 million

Originally known as John Madden Football and since 1994 as Madden NFL Football, the series is named after the Super Bowl winning coach of the Oakland Raiders and long time commentator on CBS, Fox, and ABC.

The Madden series is currently the only series using the NFL license since an exclusive rights deal was signed between the NFL and Electronic Arts in mid-December 2004. This license agreement has recently been extended to 2012.

6 - Final Fantasy

Native name: ファイナルファンタジー (fainaru fantajī)
Original release: December 18, 1987
Units sold: 92 million

Final Fantasy is an ongoing series of fantasy role-playing games (recently science-fiction fantasy role-playing games), anime, merchandise, and motion pictures. The original release of Final Fantasy in 1987 was an attempt to save Square from bankruptcy and the title reflected that situation. Director Hironobu Sakaguchi (坂口博信) knew he was better at telling a story than creating an action game and so created Final Fantasy as a fantasy RPG with many ideas now mainstay of Japanese Role-Playing games but was at the time unique and unseen. One of the most enjoyed aspects of Final Fantasy is its music. Famed video game composer and self-taught musician Nobuo Uematsu (植松伸夫) was the main composer for most of the Final Fantasy games up to Final Fantasy X.

5 - Need for Speed

Original release: August 3, 1994
Units sold: 100 million

Need for Speed is a series of racing games published by Electronic Arts. The original game was released on the Sony PlayStation, Sega Saturn, 3D0, and could be played both on Windows 95 and MS-DOS. It was unique in that it contained real cars with commentaries on each, was partnered with Road & Track to make sure sound effects were as real as possible, and had races in which you could get pulled over and ticketed by police officers.

After the initial release the games built upon the success of the previous. Many titles focusing on a particular theme such as Hot Pursuit where you attempted to outrun the police or played as the cop arresting speed violators and Underground which focused on street racing. There has been a total of sixteen Need for Speed games released.

4 - The Sims

Original release: February 4, 2000
Units sold: 125 million

The Sims is a life simulation developed by Maxis and designed by Will Wright, who originally developed the Sim City line of games. The Sims focuses on living out the lives of Sims where the player controls nearly every part of the family's life. The game is the most successful PC game of all time.

3 - Tetris

Native name: Те́трис
Original release: June 6, 1984
Units sold: 125 million

Tetris is a world phenomenon and is possibly one of the most played games of all time. Tetris was developed and programmed by Alexey Pazhitnov (Алексей Пажитнов) while he worked for a computing center at the Academy of Science of the USSR. I can't imagine there is much I can say about this game that hasn't already been said. I'll just drop this tidbit: he never received any money from the licensing of the game until 1996.

2 - Pokémon

Native name: ポケットモンスター (poketto monsutaa)
Original release: February 27, 1996
Units sold: 193 million

Pokémon is a series of video games developed by Game Freak and Creatures Inc. A large media franchise, Pokémon has had its games released in pairs for the Game Boy handhelds with an enhanced version released a few years later. Pokémon consists of many different generations with a new generation heralded in by a release of a main RPG sequel in the official line of games which introduces new monsters, characters, and game-play ideas.

1 - Mario

Native name: マリオ (mario)
Original release: 1981
Units sold: 222 million

The Mario series is highly acclaimed and extremely popular. Mario has been the mascot of Nintendo since the mid-1980s. Generally the Mario games are platform games where the player must navigate a play field littered with platforms on which to jump to and from while avoiding enemy attacks. Mario defeats his enemies by either jumping on them or launching a fire ball. Later games gave Mario and increased arsenal of attacks. The character of Mario was developed by legendary game producer (and creator of the Zelda series on this list at number 10) Shigeru Miyamoto and was the hero of the Donkey Kong game (then the character was known as Jumpman).

Typically a Mario game in the past was a launch title for a Nintendo console: Super Mario Bros. for the NES, Super Mario World of the SNES, Super Mario 64 for the Nintendo 64. However, in the last decade only 5 main-line Mario games have been released: Super Mario Sunshine (2002), New Super Mario Bros. (2006), Super Mario Galaxy (2007), New Super Mario Bros. Wii (2009), and the upcoming Super Mario Galaxy 2.